To Life
by shallowness
Summary: Gotham's elite are expected to attend each other's fundraisers. Set during 4.14, with mild spoilers for 4.19. OMC/OFC, Bruce Wayne, Ivy Pepper
1. The Jardiniers Accept

Characters/Pairing: OMC/OFC, Bruce Wayne, Ivy Pepper  
Summary: Gotham's elite are expected to attend each other's fundraisers.  
Author's Note: Set during 4.14, with mild spoilers for 4.19.

 **To Life**

 **The Jardiniers Accept: shallowness**

He grew up with the mail separated out for the members of the family on a silver tray. When he was a child, Simon was excited about receiving anything. They were either from relatives, a pen-pal from Singapore for a couple of years, or party invitations. Of course, there wasn't much mail these days, but he still recognized invitations.

"Can you make a fundraiser on the fourteenth of next month?" his wife asked.

"Of course," he replied.

"That was quick. Are you sure?"

He stopped and thought – even if he wasn't, he'd cancel the other event, but as far as he knew, his calendar was free.

"Yes." His voice was firm, and Nina looked at him properly. He was dressed for work, she was _en dishabille_. Pinned under her gaze, Simon thought, for a second, about armor.

"You haven't asked what it's raising money for or who's inviting us," she said, amused.

He met her gaze. Her eyes were the kind of blue that's almost gray, and he didn't see amusement there.

"I don't care," Simon said deliberately. "Accept, and we'll go."

"Sure," she said lightly. "It's for the Wayne Foundation, by the way."

"Okay," he replied, not thinking that she'd capitulated, knowing there was more that had to be said and that it was better to say it now. "You must realize we have to attend. People have noticed that we're been accepting invitations, and then failing to turn up. They're starting to talk. Ask questions."

She almost pouted. "They got their checks for their charities, didn't they?"

"Nina," he said on a sigh, though he was relieved that she wasn't denying anything, "that's not the point."

The first time, when she had a clothing crisis five minutes before they were due to leave home, standing in their bedroom in her underwear, Simon hadn't suspected a thing. He'd just seen that his wife was upset, told her it didn't matter what she picked, she'd look beautiful. Her response had made him lose track of time. Naked and sated, he'd remembered the fundraiser only when it was way too late to go and at that point, he didn't really care.

The second time, she'd used a stocking to tie him to the bed, laughing. Simon hadn't been able to think of anything but Nina and what she was doing to him. After the third time, though, he'd realized that nothing seemed to turn his wife on as much as avoiding attending a fundraiser among Gotham's elite.

Simon Jardinier didn't belong to one of the six families, but his family had been rich enough for long enough in the city to count as one of that elite. He was brought up knowing that that came with certain obligations. A beautiful wife he'd picked up while vacationing in Europe was tolerated, spending a lot of time with her in bed was understood, but not failing to turn up to these events. He was here in Gotham, not on a honeymoon cruise. A couple of old friends had given him a chilly reception recently. And friends were business associates. Simon wasn't used to having to leave messages with secretaries.

When his godfather had dropped a sizeable hint that they were missed at the Haverstock auction, Simon had listened, realizing that the next person to say something would be a relative, probably using the expression 'dereliction of duty' with an air of disappointment.

"All right," Nina conceded. "I have been avoiding going, but do you blame me? These fundraisers are magnets for crazy people with guns or some kind of weapons."

"That's an exaggeration," he said reflexively.

She just gave him a look, sitting there with a blue silk kimono draped over her gorgeous body. It was that self-confidence not to say anything that had attracted him to Nina, goaded him into trying to win her over. Her body and the knowing way she used it were bonuses. Simon Jardinier hadn't needed anyone's congratulations to know how lucky he was.

"We stick together," he said, "people like us. We support each other's good causes. We turn up, we're seen."

He looked at her calmly, using her own trick against her. He'd started borrowing it in the boardroom too. So far, marrying Nina had been good for business.

"Fine, I will accept on our behalf," Nina picked up the invitation, speaking in a clipped, displeased voice.

"And nothing will come up to stop us going," he said, wanting his terms to be clear.

"We will go. We will be seen."

He nodded at her words, wiped his hands with a napkin and got up to kiss Nina on the forehead. He knew that she had understood that marrying into the Jardinier family had obligations. She might not like all of them, but she'd put up with them. He hoped there wouldn't be too much simmering resentment. Still, if there was, perhaps he could help her channel her anger in the bedroom. His eyes fell on the silk belt tied around her waist – she had yet to use that on him.

That was the image he kept with him as he left for work. As for her claim that these types of events attracted danger, like all Gothamites, he put it out of his mind.

On the night of the fourteenth, Nina was ready before her husband, immaculately dressed in a figure-hugging black gown with silver accents. Simon knew better than to mention the clothing crisis, but he realized that Nina had taken just as much care in selecting the lingerie she'd worn that night she'd seduced him to stay at home as she had picking what to grace this event in. He didn't compliment her now, just kissed her hand and thanked her in her mother tongue. Nina always liked it when he did that, even if she criticized his pronunciation.

They arrived a little early at the event, Simon could see, as someone from the Wayne Foundation discreetly tapped at a screen, presumably crossing their names off a list. But the idea was for them to be noticed. And they were.

People he had known all his life nodded at them. Like him, Nina nodded and smiled back, her eyes glinting as much as the jewels she wore. Of course, everyone was really waiting for Bruce Wayne, the host of this shindig, since they'd all heard the rumors about the drinking, the partying and the auctions, but the Jardiniers' presence was noted.

A string quartette cycled through the same tasteful repertoire that you always heard at events like this. A flash went off as a cameraman took a candid of the Jardiniers mingling. Simon showed his teeth. Another flash. They might make it to the society pages. Nina looked good enough. Perhaps he could make a few calls.

They were seated at the same table as Mrs Haverstock, whose charity auction they had skipped recently. Nina dealt with her passive-aggressive comments with grace. Simon thought she relished it from the way she became more and more polite and honeyed. He started hoping that, by the end of the night, she'd be in a good mood.

Simon's godfather came to talk to him, patting him on the shoulder, complimenting Nina and then making himself scarce as it became clear the official business of the evening was beginning.

When he saw Bruce Wayne coming to the lectern, Simon thought of himself at that age, having grown to his current height, but not filled out. But however hard he'd partied, there had always been envelopes addressed to other names as well as his own on the silver tray at home. His own father had once mixed him a hangover 'cure'.

The kid hesitated, so long that it became awkward. Then he began to speak about his dead parents. Of course, they'd been the reason he'd set up this foundation. Simon's eyes wandered over to Nina, who cared more about the charities than he did. He saw her hand curve around her stomach, and stopped listening to Wayne. The gesture made him think of one thing, one thing they hadn't talked about since the engagement. They'd agreed they wanted kids someday, but for now she used birth control. It shouldn't be possible, despite all the sex they'd been having.

It wasn't possible, Simon decided; it was just Wayne's words, 'protector' and 'father,' making her think of creating more Jardiniers. Which they would, in due course. Children with his name, his and Nina's features and determination, and Simon would bring them up knowing what was expected of them.

He joined in the applause automatically. Nina, who was clapping with both hands just like everyone else, looked at him quizzically, but it was a time for small talk, leading to deals, perhaps. Explanations in conversation with his wife could wait until the drive home. Like most people in the ballroom, Simon turned to his neighbor.

And then Ivy Pepper picked up the microphone, having taken Wayne's place at the lectern, and what Simon had said couldn't happen did. Every word that Ivy Pepper said became increasingly terrifying, People started to rise from their seats, crying out, but there were goons with guns by the exits and rattles of chains around the door handles, forcing everyone to sit back down heavily. Simon was sure they all felt the same dread cementing in their stomachs as he did.

She was a grotesque mistress of ceremonies with her deadly plants, her deadly purposes. Simon wasn't near enough to see what happened to the first body, but it was clear there would be other victims.

When gunfire erupted, Simon grabbed for Nina in the chaos, following the instinct that screamed at him to stay low and get out quickly. The fewer people who were left as targets, the greater the chances they'd get hit.

They passed the dead man lying on the floor, pale but with a greenish tint to his face. Simon could see the shoots coming out of his body. He didn't gag, he didn't breathe, he just followed someone who looked like they knew where they were going, pulling Nina along with him. The shooting continued around them, loud and bringing back memories of trying to get away from danger in other suits. How could he have suppressed all those memories? Why had he pretended that this wasn't like a routine drill by this point?

They got out of the dining hall unscathed, still holding hands. Nina looked wrecked, her perfect hair mussed up, her dress ripped. Her eyes had never looked like this before.

They were both breathing hard, surrounded by other survivors, pouring outside, fewer of them than had been seated around the dining tables.

Simon saw Ivor Bainbridge pull out a phone, calling for transport or maybe a bodyguard, but his own attention was pulled back to his wife.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "you were right."

"Magnet for crazies." Nina whispered, leaning on his shoulder, suddenly drained of adrenaline. "Did you hear her? Did you see what she did? And the guns – so loud. My ears are ringing."

"I think some of them were cops," he said, inanely, inadequately, waiting for Nina to say 'I told you so.'

But she never did. She fell quiet, almost withdrawing from him, and Simon knew then that one of the reasons she'd made him stay with her in their bed was because she was carrying his child.

Cops appeared, directing everyone outside of the building.

Simon gave their names to a uniformed officer, who said the GCPD might be in touch later. Simon draped his jacket around Nina, leading her into their waiting car. After he told the driver to get them home as quickly as possible, there was silence. It allowed Simon to replay his chaotic impressions of the last few hours, and start the internal recriminations. He wasn't used to such self-examination, but for once it was unavoidable.

When they arrived, he got out of the car quickly and opened the door for Nina, nodding at the driver he'd pre-empted. Simon walked Nina into the living room, where she sank into the nearest chair with none of her usual elegance. Simon thought about offering her a drink, and then wondered if he should. He badly wanted one, but the first thing he said was.

"Next time, we decline the invitation. We send a check."

The Nina who looked at him was a wan version of his vibrant wife. In shock, maybe. If he couldn't give her anything alcoholic to drink, maybe something warm would be a good idea.

"There'll be a next time?" she asked.

He nodded.

"'We won't let them stop us,'" he quoted. Even as he said it, Simon felt distanced from the 'we' and the 'us'. All the people he'd gone to school with, grown up with, made deals with, drank and made small talk with —for all the dollars in their accounts, like him, they'd run screaming that night, terrorized by the fast-acting, unnatural death that woman and her plants had unleashed.

For him, 'we' and 'us' was Nina and him now, and the child she was carrying.

"That's their attitude," he said, coming to kneel before his wife, wanting to make her understand that he got it now. He understood her fear, her entirely rational terror. He was on her side.

"I've heard it before," he admitted.

"I think I'll never understand this city," Nina said, shaking her head.

Simon's heart sank. He was Gotham through and through, and even though he'd seen it at its worst tonight, the cops had come, the danger was over for now. In the next few weeks, there'd be funerals. There might even be more talk of the crazed eco-terrorist who'd got away. Maybe she'd get caught and sent to Arkham, for all the good that did.

Simon wasn't going to put himself or his wife in harm's way anymore, but he hadn't been planning on leaving the city either. He'd brought Nina here, where he wanted to bring up his child.

"You'll have to keep on explaining Gotham to me," Nina said, making an effort to lean forward and kiss him on the forehead. He let out a small huff of relief at her words and actions. "Can you ask someone to make me a tisane?"

He nodded and called for a maid, and then poured himself a brandy, but left it untouched. He waited for Nina's tisane to come, then, when Phuong had left, he lifted his glass.

" _L'Chaim_ ," he said, even though neither of them was Jewish. Nina locked eyes with him.

He nodded, confirming that he knew she was pregnant and that that was why everything had changed for him.


	2. Nina Says

Characters/Pairing: OFC/OMC, Ivy Pepper  
Summary: Gotham's elite are expected to attend each other's fundraisers.  
Author's Note: Nina's view of the events described in 'To Life – The Jardiniers Accept', with spoilers up to 4.14.

 **To Life**

 **2\. Nina Says: shallowness**

People in Gotham asked Nina Jardinier if she was French. No, she replied, she was Romanian. They seemed surprised. She had spent a year in Paris, and then moved further south to work as a waitress, which was what she was doing when she met Simon. She saw no reason to hide those facts, and enoyed the discomfort it caused certain people.

Simon didn't make much of a first impression on her, when he was one of a group of rich Americans, all very nice, all very interested in a group of waitresses enjoying some downtime at a bar. It didn't matter who you paired off with, you were sure of having a good time.

But then he came to her restaurant the next day looking for her. He had white teeth, broad shoulders and a need to impress.

Nina wasn't easily impressed. Her family had lost a castle once, she told him. It just made him want to build castles for her. She knew there was more to him than this summer version, playing _cherchez la femme_. He seemed confident, but he couldn't always be that confident. Nina tried to work him out, and somewhere in the middle of that, she fell for him.

By the night he had the nightmare, she was too far in. They'd fallen asleep together, still clothed, wearing swimming costumes as underwear, after a long, tiring afternoon on a friend's yacht. Jean-Paul was Simon's friend, of course.

Simon woke Nina as he mumbled in his sleep, tossing and turning. Half-asleep herself, it took her a while to understand what he was saying, "Got to get out. Stay low. Get out."

He flinched at something in his nightmare a few times. Nina watched him, not sure if she should wake him. His dream shifted and he relaxed, but Nina stayed watching over him, knowing she'd never done anything like this for anyone else before.

He invited her to America, to Gotham.

"Isn't it ruled by the Mafia?" she'd asked. He'd laughed and said it wasn't so bad. Later, she learned he'd thought he'd been telling her the truth then, that his family and others like them were the ones who ruled the city. She could never see it the same way.

Nina left her job and went to Gotham with him, of course. She found it dark and overcast, the buildings stone and solid – Gothic, yes, but young to Nina's eyes. Inside, all was lavish, where Simon took her. He liked to lead, to show off in public. She knew he was showing Gotham off for her, and showing her off at the same time.

In the bedroom, he liked it when she took charge. So she did, interested in how far she could push him. As she bound him, she bound them together.

Getting engaged was both romantic and a business transaction, with other Jardiniers telling her what would be expected with the kind of detail associated with attorneys. When Nina saw the pre-nup, it both tested her English and felt weightless compared with all the expectations and obligations marrying into the Jardiniers came with. But she looked at the stone in her ring, a diamond, and remembered Simon's face when he'd proposed. She signed the pre-nup and then she said, 'I do', in an echoing church.

Most of her family didn't come because it wasn't a Catholic wedding. Simon paid for those who did. The rest of the witnesses were from Gotham, people Nina would spend the rest of her life getting to know.

Life in Gotham was everything she'd expected and more. What women like her did was shop, and Nina learned that she'd never hit her first credit card's limit if she carried on with her frugal ways. Simon wanted her on display. Other women commented if she wore the same outfit twice.

When they weren't shopping, these women were showing off the outfits and accessories they'd bought in charity meetings, blind to the irony. Everyone had a charity. Not everyone in Gotham, but everyone Nina was introduced to. She made a point of being considerate of the staff, wherever she went, but knew it was a past life for her. She was on the other side now, the person being waited on.

There were clubs and there were social gatherings, but the big ones were the charity fundraisers. Balls, dinners, auctions, sometimes with masks and fancy dress, but you always had to make sure you ate some of the caviar.

One of their wedding gifts had been a pair of revolvers. Nina had stared and stared at them, while Simon had pulled out another gift, paid lessons at a shooting range, as if the firearms were as ordinary as cutlery. She had never seen a gun in Europe, except on armed police. She'd told him she had no interest in learning how to shoot. Simon hadn't pushed the issue, because he could, although he didn't carry a gun, but the drivers he hired did. The revolvers went into a locked box with other weapons. Nina didn't look in the box.

Her first gala that was overrun by criminals made Nina reconsider her refusal to arm herself. It was her first real experience of gunfire. She didn't scream. She shut down.

Afterwards, no-one seemed to want to talk about it. The Mayor's ineptitude, yes. The latest scandal involving a tennis instructor and a young trophy wife, oh yes, and in the next breath whether you could ever wear too many diamonds. But the fact that an armed gang had shot three people and injured two others in front of their very eyes? No, it was not discussed, not at the memorial services or anywhere, beyond speeches made up of platitudes. Nina found that only Simon would talk about it, and he seemed bored, too obviously indulging her.

It wasn't like it was a one-off. The gangs changed, got more outlandish, but there would still be fundraising events for them to crash. Nobody wanted to talk about how the Pax Penguina hadn't really worked or lasted, or that Sofia Falcone's cook had turned her guests into cannibals.

"Should I try to get a gown made of Kevlar?" Nina had once asked her mother-in-law. Mrs Jardinier had looked strangely at her, and pretended she didn't understand. As if Nina's English wasn't flawless. She read fashion magazines, style pages, essays and biographies. She watched the news, so different here in Gotham from Europe. Her accent was becoming less distinct.

Nobody talked, but Nina thought. What made Nina determined enough to avoid going in future was that she started craving pickled food, just like her mother had when she was carrying her. After three days of it, and a furtive visit to a deli, Nina became convinced she was pregnant. But she couldn't bring herself to tell Simon, or to take a test. It would mean doctors, it would mean the whole family descending down on them – his, not hers, although she could imagine the phone call to Romania.

It would begin with, "Mama, did you crave pickles in the first trimester?" Then there would be crying and advice. Nina had had her reasons for moving away to Paris.

Besides, this pregnancy wasn't meant to happen until later, after a few wedding anniversaries.

Nina tried not to think about why she was doing it as she manipulated Simon with sex. He submitted to her, of course, while she exaggerated her pleasure, but not by much. She had learned about the game 'Simon says', not from him, but from everyone else, his teasing friends in the Med and here in Gotham. Well, it was now Nina who said 'stay' and Simon who stayed with her.

Until he wouldn't and the game crashed to a halt.

That breakfast time, where she hid the fact she wasn't eating much by opening invitations, Nina could have told Simon that she was expecting their child, that she didn't want to endanger him – Simon wanted a son first to carry his name. Nina knew this. But something irrational kept her quiet. She barely argued with Simon, although she could have.

He wanted her to go, did he? Be seen by his friends – his friends, not hers – and his family. Never mind the high probability there'd be uninvited guests, and they'd come armed.

Her silence, her acquiescence led them to that dining hall, where a woman named Ivy caused destruction and chaos. They could have been shot dead, or worse, breathed in those seeds and become those abominations. Nina had wanted to cross herself when she saw that prone body with shoots growing out of it, but she'd been frozen, only moving because Simon pulled her, saved by him that time.

But never again, she thought, once they got out and the terror lifted a little. No matter if the event was to raise funds for orphaned children or lame and blind puppies. She was not going to RSVP with a 'yes'. The society matrons and the preening businessmen could go be targets for the gunmen. She wasn't a deranged Gothamite, even if she was a Jardinier now. She would write a check, and stay at home in their castle.

At home, holding the china cup that held her tisane, Nina felt a little warmth seep into her body. She'd given the kitchen the recipes that had been handed down in her family when she'd first got married.

And then her husband had made a toast to life, and she realized that Simon knew she was pregnant, and that he meant what he'd just been saying, when she had thought he was telling her what he thought she wanted to hear. There would be no more fundraisers for them. Their marriage wasn't all about her doing what he said, coming to his city, doing what his people did just because they were his people, not any more.

She repeated his toast. " _L'Chaim_."

 _To life._


End file.
